Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Deep Ecology And Postmodernity: Making Space For Conversation, Chris Drinkwater

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Fourth paragraph]

I begin with the fact of ecology's virtual exclusion from cultural studies. Cultural studies are centrally concerned with issues of meaning, subjectivity, objectivity and knowledge. They attempt to describe their production, conditions and complex structural effects. They are particularly interested in effects of inclusion and exclusion: for instance, "What is a legitimate object of attention within a particular discourse?" Why do cultural studies not attend to ecology? Why is negligible attention paid to a discourse and cultural movement, which are so challenging to dominant values and ways of life? I suggest that the omission is not accidental. Cultural …

Introduction, Alexandra Ganser, Vibha Arora

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

At the time of finalizing EcoCultures for publication, nearly all discussions in mass media remind us that climate change has been caused by anthropogenic excesses in the last three centuries. Environmental concern, intertwined with a critical and scholarly perspective, is also at the heart of EcoCultures: Culture Studies and the Environment. The twelve academic articles comprising this issue were written by scholars based in the North and South, speaking different languages yet living in a multicultural global world, and positioned in disciplines ranging from landscape and environmental history, literature and gender studies to visual studies and art. …

Contemporary Art Facing The Earth’S Irreducibility, Amanda Boetzkes

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article considers the aesthetic strategies and ethical implications of contemporary earth art. Drawing from feminist and ecological phenomenology, I argue that an ethical preoccupation with the earth is identifiable in works that evoke the sensorial plenitude of natural phenomena, but refuse to condense it into a coherent image or art object. By denying a perceptual grasp of the earth, contemporary earth artists question the possibility of representing it as such. They thereby position the earth as a territory of alterity that exists beyond our conceptual and perceptual limits. This approach counters two deeply flawed but nevertheless pervasive stances towards …

Translating Ecocriticism: Dialoguing With Michel Serres, Stephanie Posthumus

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Since its humble beginnings in the Western United States, ecocriticism has grown under the banner of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment into an organization of over 1000 members with international affiliates in Australia-New Zealand, Canada, Europe, India, Japan, Koria and the UK. At first sight, it would seem that ecocriticism has achieved global status. But as Ursula Heise remarks in her assessment of ecocriticism, this process of globalisation has been mainly a process of becoming known internationally. In truth, ecocriticism has remained strongly rooted in Anglophone literary studies even as it has been exported to …

Threatening Bodies Resisting Containment: Enemy Combatants, War Protestors And Same-Sex Couples, Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo, Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The U.S.-launched "War on Terror" has been a major driving force in political discourses during the last few years, including presidential discourse. Since September 11, 2001, presidential rhetoric has systematically entangled international efforts, such as "the War on Terror" and the War in Iraq, with domestic issues, such as same-sex marriages and civil unions. In so doing, international and domestic threats have been effectively merged into one, and in the process, specific bodies have been constructed as "terrorist" agents in need of strict containment (for example, enemy combatant bodies, war protestor bodies, and the bodies of same-sex couples). This paper …

Design And Play: Weblog Genres Of Adolescent Girls In Israel, Carmel L. Vaisman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Unique circumstances existing in the Israeli blogsphere have attracted many adolescent girls. In recent years, a growing number of weblogs belonging to adolescent girls are challenging blogging norms, creating a tension between written narratives and performance narratives that combine design and play practices. Existing weblog research has explored the connections between gender, linguistic features, and genre but has not examined visual blog genres, nor questioned the role of features inherent in weblog software in the formation of gendered blog genres and blogging norms. Based on a work-in-progress of a larger scope, I shall argue that design supportive features distinctive to …

[Introduction:] Blogging And (Expatriate) Identity, Lauren Elkin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In Lettres parisiennes: Histoires d'exil, an exchange of letters on exile between francophone writers Nancy Huston and Leila Sebbah, Huston, a native of Alberta, Canada who moved to Paris in her early twenties, explains that she doesn't write in cafes because she would hate to be mistaken for the stereotypical "American in Paris": "one of those young women who I resemble a little too closely, with their blue, blue eyes and their bizarrely healthy skin, who you find sitting at café tables scribbling ostensibly in their diaries ("today: Mona Lisa") or filling out postcards ("Dear John, can you believe …

Identity And Credibility In The Global Blogosphere, David Sasaki

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The post-national writer, in all its manifestations, is the most interesting and fruitful thing to have happened to world literature since the birth of modernism. It's safe to say this will be the literary hallmark of the new century, with the internet its Gutenberg. And post-nationalism itself is a sign of hope. After centuries of barbarity, a Union in Europe only became possible when it was harder to define who was French or German or Italian or Dutch. We can imagine what the world would be like if only Americans would become post-American.

That was Eliot Weinberger speaking …

My Life In The Panopticon: Blogging From Iran, Esther Herman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The Panopticon is a prison that was developed in the 19th century. All of the cells face inward toward a tower. Guards sit in the tower where they can see everything that is happening within the cells. The prisoners cannot see the guards. They do not even know if a guard is in the tower or not. The prisoners feel watched whether they are being watched or not. As such, they internalize the notion of being watched and become their own guards.

The Lo(N)G Revolution: The Blogosphere As An Alternative Public Sphere?, Anna Notaro

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

It is a familiar argument that we are witnessing a period of major cultural and technological upheaval, yet this recognition is rarely related to a recognition of the long history of critical reflection on the nature of cultural and social change. One of the aims of this essay is to consider the most recent discussions over technology and its political impact in the light of the seminal arguments of Raymond Williams. In Television: Technology and Cultural Form. (1974) Williams writes:

Over a wide range from general television through commercial advertising to centralised information and data-processing systems, the technology …

The Blogging Of Everyday Life, Tama Leaver

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Writing in the early 1980s, Michel de Certeau, one of the most influential theorists of 'the everyday', warned:

Marginality is today no longer limited to minority groups, but is rather massive and pervasive; this cultural activity of the non-producers of culture, an activity that is unsigned, unreadable, and unsymbolized, remains the only one possible for all those who nevertheless buy and pay for the showy products through which a productivist economy articulates itself. Marginality is becoming a universal. A marginal group has now become a silent majority.[1]

Throughout The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau argues for …

When The Well Runs Dry: An Exploration Of Water Conservation And Blue Theology, Margaret H. Ferris

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Worldwide, freshwater is becoming scarce as the Earth's population increases, the effects of pollution and global warming shrink available resources, and agriculture demands rise. As theological communities offer distinctive contributions to the dialogue, theologians need to address the crisis and provide appropriate analysis and solutions from the perspective of "Blue Theology". This paper formulates such an approach, offering some of the first efforts made towards addressing the global water crisis through a theological lens. Within the Abrahamic tradition, the essay examines: how water is specifically beloved by the Divine; and the implications of God's love of water. The paper next …

The Social Nature Of Natural Resources - The Case Of Water, Jamie Linton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Of all things, water is among the most difficult to pin down. It is nevertheless characteristic of modernity that we ascribe to it an essence, on which basis particular kinds of human-water relations are made possible while others are denied. The ascription of an essential identity to water constitutes a social and political act by which it is both made known to people and made available for people. This paper explores the implications of ascribing to water an identity as "resource." Water was pronounced a resource in the United States early in the last century in the context of the …

Time And The Tsunami, Stefan Helmreich

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In this article, Stefan Helmreich delivers an ethnographic report on an international academic conference of physical and biological oceanographers held in Goa, India, shortly after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004. Juxtaposing scientific discussions of the tsunami with novelist and anthropologist Amitav Ghosh's early 2005 visit to the hard-hit Andaman Islands, Helmreich examines various styles of narrating time in circulation in the wake of the disaster. Centering his attention on marine scientists, Helmreich discusses a tension between geological time and what he calls oscillating ocean time, a genre of time that takes in such long durée processes …

Overlooking, Rivers, Looking Over, T.S. Mcmillin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In this hybrid essay, composed of literary theory, cultural history, and fieldwork, T.S. McMillin attempts to connect the humanities to other disciplines and to connect scholarly work to the land. In the first part of the essay, he briefly develops a theory of palindromes and palindromic reflection. Palindromes connect thinking to movement and to reflection, and in turn serve as a model for experiencing texts or terrain. Occurring in music, literature, film and video art, mathematics, painting, even genetic code, palindromes underscore the complexity of the nature of things and the necessarily complex thinking that understanding the nature of things …

Dams, Plants, Pipes And Flows: From Big Water To Everyday Water, Fiona Allon

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This paper focuses on patterns of domestic water consumption. It develops an approach that emphasises the importance of seeing water use as part of a broader set of consumption practices associated with the space of the home, the garden and suburban living. Water consumption is considered as a practice that is embodied and embedded in daily life. The paper also presents the project Everyday Water as a case study of recent cultural studies research on domestic water use. The cultural approach adopted in the project represents a significant departure from much conventional resource and environmental management-based work. The Everyday Water …

On Chris Lehmann's Revolt Of The Masscult, George Ciccariello Maher

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The good folks at Prickly Paradigm are certainly doing their job. Their stated objective is “publishing challenging and sometimes outrageous pamphlets,” and Lehmann's short piece fulfills this claim brilliantly, evoking intellectual mood swings that span from shouting for joy at a particularly lucid formulation to shouting angrily at the deftness with which Lehmann transforms his lucidity into suspiciously wrongheaded and reactionary assessments. The clinical bipolarity of this work, as we will see, is no coincidence: it is precisely the political entanglement of the subject of mass culture (“masscult”) that leads to both respect for one's opponents and suspicion …

Making Happiness In West Egg And Simburbia: An Inquiry Into Consumption In The Great Gatsby And The Sims, Shawn Thomson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First two paragraphs]

At the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway reflects of his journey to the East: “this has been a story of the West” (184). Nick never explains exactly how this is the case, particularly odd since all the action takes place between Manhattan and Long Island. Nick’s hesitant explanation for this puzzling conclusion lies in the western origin of the central characters of the novel and their inability to adapt “to Eastern Life” (184). But the characters seem a part of, if not overshadowed by, the riotous world of West Egg. Only …

Constructing A New Game: J.K. Rowling’S Quidditch And Global Kid Culture, Terri Toles Patkin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

As part of her wildly popular Harry Potter fantasy series, author J.K. Rowling created a setting of magical characters to populate magical towns, perform magical jobs, purchase magical products -- and play a magical game called Quidditch. This fast-paced team sport played on broomsticks is both a participant and a spectator sport, and forms a nucleus of leisure activity and discourse in the Harry Potter books. From preschoolers to professionals, wizards in Rowling's world incorporate this virtual sport into their everyday lives. Rowling's development of Quidditch -– some have suggested that Rowling's intense dislike of school hockey practices sparked the …

You Need Love And Friendship For This Mission!: The Final Fantasy Series As Social Education For Japanese Youth, Ben Hourigan

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

From the mid to late 1990s, popular and academic discourse on video games, particularly in the United States, has focused on their supposed capacity to engender violent and otherwise anti-social behavior in youth. Much like ludologists' recent claims that video games are not a narrative medium, at least one reason for this is that commentators have too narrow an understanding of the diverse range of games that exist. In addition to this, game demonizers have demonstrated an inadequate understanding of the ways games are related to real life. In order to combat these misunderstandings, this chapter analyzes the role of …

Little Gods And Little Heroes: Hyperreal Ethics In God Games And Online Gaming, G. Christopher Williams

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Media critics, notably Jean Baudrillard, have suggested that the environment of simulations are to be defined as something more real than the real, or, in his terms, hyperreal. If hyperrealities are indeed the way that we can define the environment of multimedia technologies like video games, what sorts of ethical considerations should exist in a place that gamers conceive as more real than the real? This essay considers what ethical considerations are worth contemplating as gamers begin to take on the roles of gods and heroes in multiplayer video games. The little gods and heroes whose identities gamers have begun …

The Everyday Life Of Playing Cards, Ruralism, And The Case Of Russian Peasantry, Anna N. Kushkova

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This chapter addresses the issue of card playing in the Russian village of the second half of the nineteenth century. The author challenges a widely spread stereotype that Russian peasants did not play in any other way that merely for fun or for entertainment, but rather shows that this view is inconsistent with historical reality, which places card play at the center of daily social life. Social changes of village life after peasants' emancipation (1861) brought about systematic contacts of rural and urban population in many provinces of the country. As a result, a number of city habits and practices …

The Playing Card’S Progress: A Brief History Of Cards And Card Games, Joyce Goggin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article takes as its point of departure the fact that playing and tarot cards have generally been ignored as a topic for scholarly research, and suggests a number of reasons as to why this might be the case. While on the one hand cards are perceived as a trivial object, their long association with the occult and gambling further exacerbates the lack of serious interest taken in them. Moreover, because playing cards were imported into Europe from the East, they have been both directly and indirectly conceptualized as signifiers of oriental otherness and treated as a threat to the …

More Than Girlfriends, Geekettes, And Gladiatixes: Women, Feminism, And Fantasy Role-Playing Games, Rebecca Borah, Inez Schaechterle

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The only function women have in D&D is to serve cookies. Gary Gygax, the most well known of the creators of Dungeons & Dragons, claims he did not make this remark (Gel214th). That he did or not is perhaps, some thirty years after the introduction of the first fantasy role-playing game, of concern only to him. The problematic position of women players is a secure feature of the RPG zeitgeist. While few male gamers may openly challenge the assumption that women can or should play fantasy role games such as Dungeons & Dragons, the function of …

The Horror Is Alive: Immersion, Spectatorship, And The Cinematics Of Fear In The Survival Horror Genre, Jay Mcroy

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The video game genre known as survival horror resembles contemporary horror cinema in that both increasingly popular forms of entertainment allow audiences to experience fear resulting from the development of suspense coupled with the dread and shock of encountering monstrosity. One need only note the remarkable success of next generation video game franchises like Resident Evil (1996) and Silent Hill (1999) to realize that, more than ever before, game players in their late teens and beyond long to immerse themselves within interactive nightmares that offer the kind of thrills and chills once available exclusively through horror literature and films. However, …

The Game's Afoot: Images Of Infinite Games In Samuel Delany's Trouble On Triton, Marc R. Zaldivar

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Games are frequently used in speculative literature as a metaphor for real-world activities. In Trouble on Triton, Samuel Delany uses several sorts of games in order to explore complex systems of modeling and interrelationships between fiction and reality, extending a tradition in science fiction of placing games at the very center of social reality. Zaldivar's essay seeks to define some of the concepts of game theory that can be used to understand this complex novel and its representation of human social life. In particular, Zaldivar explores finite and infinite games and their uses within a deconstructive theoretical framework. A …

Multi-Player Computer Gaming: Better Than Playing (Pc Games) With Yourself, Melanie Swalwell

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Based on research conducted with a multiplayer gaming group, this article introduces and critically outlines the phenomenon of lanning, the practice where computer game players get together to play each other over a local area network or LAN. The author argues that lanning presents a significant challenge to a number of ingrained assumptions about computer gaming. Primary amongst these is that lanning entails players meeting, not just in the virtual world of a game, but also face to face, dealing a blow to theories that gamers are anti-social. The author argues that the sociality of this form of gameplay also …

Role Playing Games As Interactive Fiction, John Miller

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This chapter compares the experience of gaming and the experience of reading, and explores what that comparison might tell us about each. More specifically, it applies methods of literary analysis to the study of two narrative activities situated near the border of reading and gaming: Electronic hyperfictions and role-playing games. Miller first reviews literary theories of reader response and interactivity and notes how these have informed recent critical discussions of literary hyperfiction. He then critiques these discussions and the claims made for hyperfiction's liberating or empowering effect on readers: Contrary to the claims of some critics, such narratives generally fail …

Digital Extensions And Performed Players: A Theoretical Model For The Video/Computer Game, Ben Fisler

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Despite over twenty years of studies, scholars have yet to identify a productive theoretical model for the video game that does not depend on a fragmentary understanding of its form. Following Pierre Bourdieu's contention that the purpose of criticism is to understand cultural products as distinct scientific objects, and Marshall McLuhan's theory that the message and formative power of media are the media themselves, this study attempts to generate a foundational critical understanding of the video game. Building on the most lucrative intrinsic (such as David Myer's 1991 Computer Game Semiotics) and extrinsic (such as Jeffrey Goldstein's 1998 Immortal …

Allegorical Reductions And Social Reconstructions: An Introduction To Games, Gamers, And Gaming Cultures, Matthew Wolf-Meyer, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Games have become a central metaphor in representations of society, and most people are familiar enough with Lewis Carroll's Alice to know that when she passes through the looking glass she finds herself embroiled in a game a Chess which is also much more (Carroll 1992 [1897]). This strange game of Chess is simultaneously a simulation and an enactment of social life in Wonderland, and Carroll plots out Alice 's narrative path as a series of tactical Chess moves, which can be understood as both an attempt to win the game and to navigate through Wonderland and her …